Romney's shift on student loans

By Alexander Burns

04/24/12 04:23 PM EDT

Mitt Romney generated quite few headlines Monday when he voiced support for keeping federal student loan interest rates from going up – a position that puts him at odds with Republicans in Congress, and maneuvers him closer to the political center for the general election.

It’s also a stance that appears to clash with some of Romney’s rhetoric on the campaign trail during the Republican primary. A source flagged this video (below) of Romney during a Feb. 29 campaign stop in Ohio, answering a law student’s question about what he would do to help people address loans for education.

“I just started law school and they’re doing away with un-subsidized loans for grad students, which makes it almost impossible to pay off our debts, have a car, have a house, have a family before we retire. What are you going to do for people like me?” the young woman asked.

Romney began his answer by saying that he wished he “could tell you that there’s a place to find really cheap money, or free money, and we could pay for everyone’s education.

But, Romney said, “that’s just not going to happen,” and he proceeded to argue that it’s not a good thing to have government too involved in student loans.

“Now that the government’s taking over the student loan business, I think you’ll get less competition. I’d rather have more competition, with private lenders as well as government lenders,” Romney said. “The right course for America is for businesses and universities and colleges to compete, and for us to make sure that we provide loans to the extent we possibly can at an interest rate that doesn’t have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to school.”

Going a step further, Romney told the Ohio crowd that he wants loans to be accessible to people, but that if voters want somebody who “will be some who get up in a setting like this and talk about how they’re going to give you a bunch of government money … that’s not who I am.”

While Romney didn’t specifically address the issue of interest rates on federal student loans, his repeated insistence on not handing out more government money to pay for college – and skepticism about government involvement in lending – would seem at odds with the policy stance he announced Monday.

I asked a Romney campaign official to explain the difference; the official repeatedly declined to do so on the record, and asserted that Romney had been “addressing proposals to completely forgive student loan debt” when he spoke in Ohio. I pointed out that there was no reference to complete loan forgiveness in the question or in Romney’s remarks, and got no response.